A few years ago, Kathleen Breault was just another suburban grandma, driving countless hours every week, stopping for lunch at McDonald’s, buying clothes at the mall, watching TV in the evenings.

That was before Breault heard an author talk about the bleak future of the world’s oil supply. Now, she’s preparing for the world as we know it to disappear.

Breault cut her driving time in half. She switched to a diet of locally grown foods near her upstate New York home and lost 70 pounds. She sliced up her credit cards, banished her television and swore off plane travel. She began relying on a wood-burning stove.

“I was panic-stricken,” the 50-year-old recalled, her voice shaking. “Devastated. Depressed. Afraid. Vulnerable. Weak. Alone. Just terrible.”

Read it all.

Hating every minute of it, Americans are slowly learning to live with high gasoline prices. For a nation accustomed to cheap fuel, big vehicles and sprawling suburbs, the adjustments are wrenching.

Cory Asmus of Temecula, Calif., just bought a $4,800 motorcycle for his 20-mile drive to work so he could cut his gas bill to $8 a week, from $110.

Florian Bialas, a retiree who lives near Chicago, sold his 1987 Pontiac Sunfire for $3,000 and plans to relinquish his license when it expires in September. “I can walk to most places where I need to go,” he said.

And Debbie Gloyd of Cleveland has parked her Chrysler Concorde and started taking the bus to work. “I can’t afford these gas prices,” she said. “They’re insane.”

With the nationwide average price for regular gasoline closing rapidly on $4 a gallon, people are bracing for a summer of pain at the pump.

As the Memorial Day holiday approaches, kicking off the summer driving season, the record prices are provoking dread and upsetting some people’s vacation plans. A recent survey by AAA, the automobile club, found a rare year-on-year decline, of 1 percent, in the number of people planning to travel this summer.

Read it all.

One month after an avalanche knocked out its connection to a hydroelectric dam, much of Juneau, Alaska, is still relying on diesel back-up generators. Residential electricity rates have gone up about 400 percent.

As a result, residents and the city have embarked on an extraordinary conservation campaign. Compact fluorescent light bulbs are common; restaurants routinely dim the lights.

Host Renee Montagne talks to Kate Golden, a reporter at The Juneau Empire

Listen to it all from NPR.

Motorists face record gasoline prices as the summer driving season kicks off this weekend, but those willing to spend close to $4 a gallon to leave town may enjoy at least one benefit: less holiday traffic.

The American Automobile Association expects record gas prices and an uncertain economy to reduce the number of people traveling over the Memorial Day weekend for the first time since 2002, when fresh memories of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks kept Americans close to home, said Art Kinsman, spokesman for AAA of Southern New England.

In the Northeast, AAA projects holiday travel will fall 3 percent from a year ago, and travel should slip about 1 percent nationally.

“It’s been climbing steadily for the past several years,” Kinsman said, “but we’ve finally reached the point where gas prices are affecting people’s decision to drive long distances.”

Read it all.

It may be the mother of all doom and gloom gas price predictions: $12 for a gallon of gas is “inevitable.”

Robert Hirsch, Management Information Services Senior Energy Advisor, gave a dire warning about the potential future of gas prices on CNBC’s May 20 “Squawk Box”. He told host Becky Quick there was no single thing that would solve the problem, due to the enormity of the problem.

As they say in the U.K. this is over the top, but it is illustrative of the level of concern out there at the moment. Read or watch it all.

A growing wave of companies in all sectors ”” technology, financial services, energy, retail, manufacturing ”” are embracing environmentally safe practices and saving hundreds of millions of dollars, according to corporate leaders and an environmental group’s report Tuesday.

SunPower (STI), Sierra Nevada Brewing, Patagonia, Ikea, Nike (NKE), Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), UPS (UPS), Yahoo (YHOO) and others are using green practices in their work sites, in product development and packaging, in energy-saving data centers and other technology, according to a report by the non-profit Environmental Defense Fund.

The report was released here at a news conference featuring green-friendly CEOs and California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

David Yarnold, the fund’s executive director, says green business practices “can create competitive advantage” and “strengthen the bottom line.”

Read it all.

Fears of a shortage within five years propelled long-term oil futures prices to almost $140 a barrel, further stoking inflationary pressures in the global economy.

The spot price of Nymex West Texas Intermediate hit a record $130.30 a barrel on Wednesday. On Tuesday investors had rushed to buy oil futures contracts as far forward as December 2016, pushing their prices as high as $139.50 a barrel, up more than $9.50 on the day.

Veteran traders said they had never seen such a jump and said investors were increasingly betting that oil production would soon peak because of geopolitical and geological constraints.

Neil McMahon, of Sanford Bernstein, said: “Peak oil views ”“ regardless of whether right or wrong ”“ are seeping into the market and supporting high prices.”

It feels as if recently every morning I get up and oil is at another record high. Yuck. Read it all.

As oil soared to a record-high $127 a barrel on Friday, Saudi Arabia’s leader rebuffed appeals by President Bush to increase oil production, saying they did not see enough demand to warrant increased output.

“The Saudi government has reiterated their policy that Saudi Arabia is willing to put on the oil market whatever oil is necessary to meet the demand of Saudi Arabia’s customers,” said Bush’s National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley.

Bush made the plea as U.S. motorists suffer rapidly rising prices at the pump, soaring to a record average of $3.787 for a gallon of regular gas, according to AAA’s Daily Fuel Gauge Report. The average a year ago was $3.114. Bush made a similar unsuccessful appeal to Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah in January.

Saudi Arabia is the world’s largest oil producer and a member of OPEC, the Organization of the Oil Exporting Countries, which controls more than 40 percent of the world’s crude oil supply. Saudi Arabia’s oil minister Ali al-Naimi said in South Korea on Thursday that the record oil prices are a result of turmoil in financial markets, not from a shortage in supply.

Read it all.

Out on the sun-drenched plains east of San Luis Obispo, a Palo Alto-based startup, Ausra Inc., plans to build an enormous array of high-tech mirrors spread over 640 acres. Focusing solar rays on miles of water-filled pipes, the installation will heat enough steam to power turbine generators capable of serving the electricity needs of 60,000 homes, at prices that will soon be competitive with traditional forms of energy.

Ausra is only one of several solar pioneers that Pacific Gas and Electric Company and other utilities are supporting with long-term power contracts. Backed in many cases by Silicon Valley venture investors, they reflect the same spirit of innovation that made California a world leader in electronics and information technology.

Along with equally innovative developers of wind, geothermal, and other forms of renewable power, they are on the forefront of finding solutions to the greatest challenge of our times: reducing greenhouse gas emissions to prevent runaway global warming.

But their entrepreneurial efforts may be stillborn if Congress fails to extend vital production and investment tax credits that have nurtured the renewable power industry as it works to implement emerging technology and achieve scale economies.

Read it all.

In a fascinating essay in the book Ecopsychology, Mary Gomes and Alan Kanner probe the relevance of our sense of self to the environmental crisis, focusing on the early development of the child. So far as we know, newborn babies make few if any distinctions in their experience, not even between “self” and “mother”. These develop with time, but differently in different cultures: in ours we have built up the fiercest distinction ever known between humans and the rest of the biosphere, which has simply become a resource we can exploit in any way we please. This attitude, combined with our ingenuity, has led the biosphere to the brink of the sixth great extinction – the first conscious one. The essay discusses the “separative self” – we are still dependent on our environment for each breath we take, but our actions are based on the illusion of independence.

But separation is behovely. The child’s ego must be allowed to develop. Language, even thought, depends on making distinctions; a word or concept defines something by excluding other things. The fatal flaw arises from making separation absolute. Redemption is a dialectic: we think ourselves separate, rise up on angel’s wings, then are dashed down when the reality of total interdependence calls us back to earth. Like a parent picking up a fallen toddler, life sets us back on course, hopefully a little wiser. We fall at another hurdle, learn a little more. Eventually we may learn respect for our limitations, teamwork, even love – but we can and must still strike out on our own, to fall back again into the loving arms of interdependence, learned in a new way each time.

Read it all.

President Bush said Monday that when he meets Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah later this week, he’ll bring up the effect that high oil prices are having on the U.S. and global economies.

“Of course I’ll bring it up to him,” Bush said in a CBS News radio interview. However, he added that the capacity of the Saudis to raise production ”” and thus help lower prices ”” is limited.

“When you analyze the capacity for countries to put oil on the market it’s just not like it used to be,” Bush said. “The demand for oil is so high relative to supply these days that there’s just not a lot of excess capacity.”

Read it all.

Even for Americans — who are constitutionally convinced that there will always be a second act, and a third, and a do-over after that, and, if necessary, a little public repentance and forgiveness and a Brand New Start — even for us, the world looks a little terminal right now.

It’s not just the economy: We’ve gone through swoons before. It’s that gas at $4 a gallon means we’re running out, at least of the cheap stuff that built our sprawling society. It’s that when we try to turn corn into gas, it helps send the price of a loaf of bread shooting upward and helps ignite food riots on three continents. It’s that everything is so tied together. It’s that, all of a sudden, those grim Club of Rome types who, way back in the 1970s, went on and on about the “limits to growth” suddenly seem … how best to put it, right.

All of a sudden it isn’t morning in America, it’s dusk on planet Earth.

Read it all.

Eventually, OPEC will open the taps and oil prices will recede–a bit, for a while. But our dependence on a small group of countries whose interests are often diametrically opposed to ours will continue, and as long as it does, they’ll hold the fate of our economy in their hands.

Time to drill in the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge? No. Time to cut us gas-subsidy checks? No. Time to work on a tax and consumption policy that encourages less oil usage and more investment in alternative, renewable energy.

Read it all.

With the price of gas approaching $4 a gallon, more commuters are abandoning their cars and taking the train or bus instead.

Mass transit systems around the country are seeing standing-room-only crowds on bus lines where seats were once easy to come by. Parking lots at many bus and light rail stations are suddenly overflowing, with commuters in some towns risking a ticket or tow by parking on nearby grassy areas and in vacant lots.

“In almost every transit system I talk to, we’re seeing very high rates of growth the last few months,” said William W. Millar, president of the American Public Transportation Association.

“It’s very clear that a significant portion of the increase in transit use is directly caused by people who are looking for alternatives to paying $3.50 a gallon for gas.”

Some cities with long-established public transit systems, like New York and Boston, have seen increases in ridership of 5 percent or more so far this year. But the biggest surges ”” of 10 to 15 percent or more over last year ”” are occurring in many metropolitan areas in the South and West where the driving culture is strongest and bus and rail lines are more limited.

Read it all.

Thom Mason, director of Oak Ridge National Laboratory, said a Manhattan-like project for energy independence could employ some of the same development techniques used during the A-bomb work – such as parallel testing of different ideas to see which ones work best.

However, energy independence is likely to be an even more complicated task, Mason said, because unlike the World War II project it doesn’t have a single, dedicated “deliverable” – a bomb to end the war.

A number of ORNL scientists, including David Greene, a top fuel economist and transportation researcher, offered comments during the session and discussed what should be priorities. Greene said transportation is at the heart of the nation’s oil-dependence problem, and he said one goal should be doubling the fuel economy over today’s level by 2030.

But production of biofuels and greater fuel economy won’t be enough to achieve energy independence, Greene said.

“To accomplish that goal, we must make electricity, hydrogen – or both – clean, carbon-free, competitive choices for American motorists,” he said. Greene cited the need for a new generation of advanced batteries and fuel cells and better, safer ways of storing hydrogen aboard vehicles.

Read it all.

Oil rose above $126 a barrel for the first time Friday, bringing its advance this week to nearly $10, as investors questioned whether a possible confrontation between the U.S. and Venezuela could cut exports from the OPEC member. Gas prices, meanwhile, rose above an average $3.67 a gallon at the pump, following oil’s recent path higher.

On Friday, The Wall Street Journal published a report that suggested closer ties between Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and rebels attempting to overthrow Colombia’s government. Chavez has been linked to Colombian rebels previously, but the paper reported it had reviewed computer files indicating concrete offers by Venezuela’s leader to arm guerillas. That appears to heighten the chances that the U.S. could impose sanctions on one of its biggest oil suppliers.

“If we put on sanctions, I’m sure Chavez would threaten to cut off our oil supply,” said Phil Flynn, an analyst at Alaron Trading Corp. “Obviously that would have a major impact on oil prices.”

Read it all.

When you dial 770-978-5717, you’ll hear a recording that says “First Baptist Snellville is offering you the chance to win one of two $500 gas cards.”

Pastor Dr. Rusty Newman says “we are beginning a revival, ah starting this Sunday. If you attend the service you are able to sign up for a drawing to place your name in at the end of the service stating you were there. Then on Wednesday evening at the conclusion of service we will be drawing for that ability to win the prize.”

Read it all.

We are truly pathetic about energy. No help for clean coal, no support for natural gas. Nothing. We are our own worst enemy.

—Financial columnist Jim Cramer in a column today

The leadership of the Anglican Church in the Caribbean has expressed concern about the growing difficulties being experienced by people of the region because of the rising cost of food and other commodities.

Bishops and members of the Standing Committee of the Anglican Church in the Province of the West Indies, recorded their concern at a recent meeting in Barbados.

They said the worsening global situation is creating undue hardships for people everywhere.

In a communiqué issued after the meeting, the church leaders expressed concern for the poor and those on the margins of society who are finding it impossible to provide the basic needs for their families and to cope with the demands of daily living.

Read it all.

Sitting cross-legged in the dirt beneath a canopy of jungle vegetation, Nasruddin Anshory, with his Koran open in front of him, was telling a group of visitors about their ordained responsibility to protect the environment.

“As a Muslim,” he said, “you have to do something.”

His visitors were a mix of people from universities and mosques all over the island of Java, seeking to broaden their understanding of Islam. Off to the side were several students from Gajah Mada University nearby, eagerly taking notes in preparation for their dissertations, all of which will focus on promoting conservation through Islam.

Nasruddin founded Ilmu Giri, an Islamic school devoted to environmentalism, five years ago. But in the past couple of years, as global awareness of climate change and related problems has increased, interest in the school has swelled.

Read it all.

Oil futures blasted to a new record of $122 a barrel Tuesday, gaining momentum as investors bought on a forecast of much higher prices and on any news hinting at supply shortages. Retail gas prices edged lower, but appear poised to rise to new records of their own in coming weeks.

A new Goldman Sachs prediction that oil prices could rise to $150 to $200 within two years seemed to motivate much of Tuesday’s buying, although a falling dollar and increasing concerns about declining crude production in Mexico and Russia contributed, analysts say.

Read it all.

Oil prices crossed 120 dollars a barrel here Monday following fresh unrest in Nigeria, Africa’s largest oil producer.

New York’s main oil futures contract, light sweet crude for June delivery, briefly hit 120.20 dollars, before slipping back at 1520 GMT to 120 dollars, a gain of 3.68 dollars from the closing price on Friday.

The price surge came on supply jitters from Nigeria and geopolitical tension in Iran, analysts said.

Volumes were light, however, as the British and Japanese markets observed a public holiday.

“Nigeria is the lingering hotspot the markets will be focusing on,” said MF Global analyst Ed Meir.

Read it all.

Sen. Barack Obama, the other Democratic presidential contender, has rejected the tax interruption as a “quick fix” with limited benefits and numerous drawbacks.

The White House and congressional leaders in both parties also sound rightly dubious. Other well-informed votes against the gas-tax holiday: Friday’s Los Angeles Times quoted Joseph Doyle, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor, as saying economists are “as close to unanimous as you can get” in regarding it as a “horrible idea.”

Yes, higher gas prices are tough on our personal and collective budgets. Then again, higher gas prices strengthen motivation for fuel conservation, alternative-energy development and mass transit.

Our long-term energy problems require long-term solutions, not short-term gas-tax “holidays” that merely delay the inevitable adjustments we must make now that the era of cheap oil is over.

Read it all.

“The emphasis is totally on this one ethical dimension of our faith. … That’s important…”

Note carefully the quote above from yours truly in the article cited, in which I agree about the importance of stewardship of the environment with the Presiding Bishop. But the analysis of the Anglican Scotist cites me as saying something I did not say. This typifies the pattern of talking by one another which continues apace in far too many instances in the current TEC.

I continute to insist that there needs to be far more self-criticism in the current environment, and when criticism of those who differ with us is attempted, it needs to reflect the arguments which it is seeking to refute accurately and fairly–KSH.

State water officials reported Thursday that the Sierra Nevada snowpack, the source of a huge portion of California’s water supply, was only 67 percent of normal, due in part to historically low rainfall in March and April.

With many reservoirs at well-below-average levels from the previous winter and a federal ruling limiting water pumped from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, the new data added a dimension to a crisis already complicated by crumbling infrastructure, surging population and environmental concerns.

“We’re in a dry spell if not a drought,” said California Secretary for Resources Mike Chrisman. “We’re in the second year, and if we’re looking at a third year, we’re talking about a serious problem.”

Chrisman stopped short of saying the state would issue mandatory water rationing, which appears possible only if the governor declares a state of emergency. Rather, the burden will fall on local water agencies. Many, such as San Francisco and Marin County, have asked residents and businesses over the past year to cut water usage voluntarily by 10 to 20 percent.

Others have taken more drastic steps.

In Southern California, the water district serving about 330,000 people in Orange County enacted water rationing last year, due in part to a ruling by U.S. Judge Oliver Wanger reducing water pumped from the delta by about a third to protect an endangered fish.

Read it all.

Soaring gas prices have turned the steady migration by Americans to smaller cars into a stampede.

In what industry analysts are calling a first, about one in five vehicles sold in the United States was a compact or subcompact car during April, based on monthly sales data released Thursday. Almost a decade ago, when sport utility vehicles were at their peak of popularity, only one in every eight vehicles sold was a small car.

The switch to smaller, more fuel-efficient vehicles has been building in recent years, but has accelerated recently with the advent of $3.50-a-gallon gas. At the same time, sales of pickup trucks and large sport utility vehicles have dropped sharply.

In another first, fuel-sipping four-cylinder engines surpassed six-cylinder models in popularity in April.

“It’s easily the most dramatic segment shift I have witnessed in the market in my 31 years here,” said George Pipas, chief sales analyst for the Ford Motor Company.

Read it all–I say thank goodness.

The common thread here is anti-intellectual, populist demagoguery. Economists believe the gas tax suspension won’t help consumers. Under current market conditions, the after-tax price of gasoline won’t fall. (And the precedent this would set would be a disaster for the future of weaning Americans off of cheap, carbon-intensive fuel.) So the fact that economists or Tom Friedman may live in cities is obviously not relevant at all. I can imagine Clinton and McCain promising to solve the health care crisis by promising free government-issued leeches, and when doctors insist the leeches won’t help, they reply that it’s easy for rich doctors with their lavish medical plans to say we don’t need a solution.

Generally, betting on the intelligence of the American public is a bad move. But, like Noam, I think this is a great fight for Obama right now. Here’s how pointing out his refusal to pander on the gas tax helps Obama….

Read it all.

A Nobel laureate scientist and a leader of the evangelical Christian movement walk into a restaurant.

It sounds like the setup for a joke, a scenario that is screaming for a punch line that plays off the seemingly endless disagreements between faith and science.

But this is a true story, and Dr. Eric Chivian and the Rev. Richard Cizik have come up with a zinger no one could expect. They went to lunch together to agree on something – the need to curb negative human impact on the Earth. And the partnership they formed that afternoon in 2005 has led this odd couple of the environmental movement to be named, today, to Time Magazine’s list of the 100 most influential people in the world.

“I must admit I approached that meeting with some anxiety,” said Chivian (pronounced chih-vee-an), director of the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School, “I’m involved in evolutionary biology. I support stem cell research. I have gay friends who are married. I felt I had positions that would be at odds with his.”

Cizik (pronounced sigh-zik), vice president for governmental affairs for the 45,000-church National Association of Evangelicals in Washington, D.C,, had similar reservations. But, as they point out, they were not there to discuss their differences. What brought them together is what Chivian calls “a deep, fundamental commitment to life on earth.”

Together, they formed the Scientists and Evangelicals Initiative, which aims to unite the two communities to help bring an environmental message into the large and powerful evangelical movement.

Read it all.

It is great to see that we finally have some national unity on energy policy. Unfortunately, the unifying idea is so ridiculous, so unworthy of the people aspiring to lead our nation, it takes your breath away. Hillary Clinton has decided to line up with John McCain in pushing to suspend the federal excise tax on gasoline, 18.4 cents a gallon, for this summer’s travel season. This is not an energy policy. This is money laundering: we borrow money from China and ship it to Saudi Arabia and take a little cut for ourselves as it goes through our gas tanks. What a way to build our country.

When the summer is over, we will have increased our debt to China, increased our transfer of wealth to Saudi Arabia and increased our contribution to global warming for our kids to inherit.

No, no, no, we’ll just get the money by taxing Big Oil, says Mrs. Clinton. Even if you could do that, what a terrible way to spend precious tax dollars ”” burning it up on the way to the beach rather than on innovation?

The McCain-Clinton gas holiday proposal is a perfect example of what energy expert Peter Schwartz of Global Business Network describes as the true American energy policy today: “Maximize demand, minimize supply and buy the rest from the people who hate us the most.”

Good for Barack Obama for resisting this shameful pandering.

Read it all.

Paying for gasoline easily tops the list of economic woes facing families in the United States, according to a survey on how changes in the economy have affected people’s lives.

About 44 percent of survey participants said paying for gasoline was a “serious problem” for them. Across all income levels, the cost of gas was the most frequently cited economic concern. The price of gas nationally averaged $3.60 a gallon on Monday, according to the Energy Department.

More than a quarter of households earning more than $75,000 a year described paying for gasoline as a serious problem. For those with incomes of less than $30,000, about 63 percent felt that way.

In a distant second and third place among participants’ economic concerns were: getting a good-paying job or raise, 29 percent; and paying for health care and health insurance, 28 percent.

Read it all.